Big, Bright, Beautiful
by SuperKateB
Summary: And living a dream in reality, in a world of logic and sense, only leads to a boulevard of broken dreams." (GrissomGreg. Companion piece to "Cold and Alone.")


"**Big, Bright, Beautiful"  
****Companion Piece to "Cold and Alone"  
****A CSI Fanfiction  
****Written by Kate "SuperKate" Butler**

There is more to every story than what immediately, initially meets the eye.

It's easy enough, as a human being living with the dichotomy between emotion and logic, to leap directly to conclusions. The most dangerous trap we can fall into is relying on our initial impressions over the mental faculties we've been granted. Factor in the variable that is emotion – raw, senseless, blind to evidence and facts – and we're left stumbling through the darkness.

I've been accused, so many times, of being cold. Cath, especially, will tighten her brow and jaw when I remind her that we need to trust the evidence over the words and strive for the "what" and the "how" over the "why."

Ours, as they say, is not to reason "why."

But, as Warrick would probably mutter under his breath, I am a CSI before anything else. I've been trained to notice even the minutest of details, and I do, indeed, find them. I see your gaze avoiding mine, focusing on the floor or the ceiling. I sense the hollowness in your smile, the sadness in your voice, the pain in your expressions. Your shoulders are slumped, your eyes are rimmed with just the slightest half-moons of darkness, the whites of your eyes are bloodshot. You're drinking far too much tea – all caffeinated, if the wrappers in the break room garbage are any indication – and eating far too little.

And every time I turn to walk away, I feel your eyes at my back.

I have tried, so many mornings, as I lie awake in bed, to imagine the raw emotion that I can see percolating just behind your façade. I search for the pain, the sorrow, the loneliness, and I find none.

So then, I reach for the sympathy.

Catherine has said, when no one else has been around to hear, that I need to find more sympathy, that my life revolves around science more than the human condition, and that, to prosecute humans for their crimes, I need to be able to study human nature from the perspective as a fellow human, not as a scientist. Studying human beings, she argues, is not like studying tarantulas and maggots. Our behavior is too highly evolved, too rational while being irrational, and too fueled by what's inside our hearts.

Sometimes, I think, the other CSIs even wonder if I have a heart.

Groping for the sympathy, as I lie awake in my dark apartment, I find nothing. No pain, no sorrow, no regret. My mind wraps around the facts, logic, and rational nature of the situation, and knows nothing of the pain. For me, there is no pain. Only what makes sense in my mind.

What makes sense in my mind is that I tried. I tried to stay on your side of the door, to watch E.R. with you on the couch, to watch the sun rise over the city, to chat pleasantly over sandwiches before work. I labored to cultivate the feelings I knew, rationally, I should have within my heart, the feelings of warmth and comfort, of adoration and devotion.

And yet, as I laid awake while you slept, sprawled across my bare chest, your face nuzzled into my skin, thought only of the rest of our big, bright, beautiful world.

Six billion strangers, all beyond that apartment, all busily wandered through their lives while we lounged tangled in your sheets, crossing paths and weaving in and out of one another's experiences without ever realizing who they touched, or hurt. They come, they go, and lives are made and broken only in those blink-length spans of time when we greet one another, only to part again.

Always to part.

Life, human or otherwise, is not meant to be permanent. We're born, we live, we die, and we become one with the earth again, so that the rest of humanity can continue living in a fertile environment. But, while we slowly fade into nothing more than nitrogen-rich soil, our decedents are living and dying, as well. The circle of life continues to turn, whether we are there or not.

No beginning can exist without an end. It's as certain as night following day, as spring following winter. The ending must come, for better or for worse.

I want to look at this the way you see it, Greggo. I really, honestly do. I want to see your black-and-white case of right and wrong, of love and hate, of doing or dying, but I see none of it. All I see is the facts I know, the facts that I have known for months but tried, desperately, to avoid, all for fear of hurting you.

The fact that I cannot live a lie.

The fact that you cannot live a lie.

The fact that neither of us can live a dream.

The fact that all good things come to an end.

Catherine glanced at me awkwardly when I arrived early to work a few days ago, and cocked her head at me. "You're acting differently," she decided after a moment's pause, as I sat on the bench in the locker room and changed my shoes.

I shrugged. "I don't know what you mean."

"Yes, you do, Gil. You're not saying what it is, but I know something's wrong."

"Nothing's wrong." I closed my locker, no longer caring about changing my shoes, or my clothes, or any of the other minutia of arriving to work. "I'm absolutely fine."

"I'm sure."

The fact of the matter, when all is said and done and I sit in my office, staring at the wall, is that this is about you as much as it is about me. I remember your anger as vividly as your tears, your screams after me as I reached the doorway, the sound of your frustration as you knocked a lamp from the table and allowed it to shatter on the floor.

"It's all about you, isn't it?" you accused, howling at my back. I gripped the doorknob. "You wanted this relationship, so you got it. You want to leave, and now you get that, too! Do you even care that I have feelings? Or is it too hard for the great Gil Grissom to admit to hurting another human being?"

I opened the door and walked out, leaving your sobs behind me, leaving you staring at my back. The sun filtered in through the dingy window at the end of the hall, and I stared at the sun over Las Vegas, staring at the big, bright, beautiful world beyond the both of us, and the billions of strangers with their crisscrossing paths.

You never understood that I would hurt you either way, and that we would part despite either of our best intentions. You never understood that I hurt you now to avoid hurting you later, to allow you the time and means to recover from the pain.

In your bed, your arms around me, I slept more comfortably and more soundly than I have in all my years alone. And when I slept, I had pleasant dreams, dreams of happiness and contentment, dreams filled with warmth.

No nightmares. Never a single nightmare.

There are no nightmares now, now that I lay awake all day, staring at the ceiling and the walls, wrapped up in the logic and emotion, the sense and the nonsense, the reason and the unreason.

Parting now or parting later, does it matter, in the end? Together for five months, five years, or five decades, one of us would leave the other alone. Our beautiful, warm dream would end, and our lives would shatter like a lamp against a hardwood floor.

Sara, in my office yesterday, glanced at my board and frowned. "There's a new note," she pointed out, gesturing to a small green post-it tacked onto the fish's tail. "'GS', dated three weeks ago. Were you working on a case I didn't know about?"

I, too, glanced at the board, the post-it, and her frown.

"No," I answered vaguely, shrugging and returning to my work, "but yes. I was working on a case, but not."

She smirked slightly. "Griss, sometimes, you're way too vague for me to wrap my head around."

I allowed myself to look fleetingly in her direction, making brief eye contact. "So I've heard," I replied, watching her shadow dance across the floor, caught in the fading light through my office window as she moved towards the door. The sun played across the tile, brilliant yellow-gold light flowing in from that big, bright, beautiful world.

I cannot live a lie.

You cannot live a lie.

And living a dream in reality, in a world of logic and sense, only leads to a boulevard of broken dreams.

Ours is not to reason "why."

Ours is but to keep moving forward, keep living, and keep hoping for our paths to cross happily, one after another, as we meet the other members beyond ourselves, the other members of our big, bright, beautiful world.

**Fin**.

Disclaimer: CSI belongs to Jerry Bruckheimer and CBS, neither of whom is me.

Author's Notes: A member of the CSIslash LiveJournal community inspired me to write a piece called "Cold and Alone" based on a Cure song. It was this heartbreaking, powerful, bittersweet piece, and then, said member posted the companion to that song and suggested I present the story from another perspective. What I got was this companion piece, told from Grissom's point of view, about the same exact incident. We're able to see other details of the tale through his eyes, even if this story is not as heartbreaking.

(In a way, though, it is.)

This is, of course, Grissom/Greg. Comments and reviews are nice. As an author, I feed on them.

March 13, 2005  
2:05 p.m.


End file.
